[BlindMath] Resources For Composing Accessible Research Papers

Tue Jan 24 14:37:42 UTC 2023

Dear all,

All of those points are very helpful - I appreciate it!

Thanks.

On 1/19/23, Jason White via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> In addition, tagged PDF is poorly supported in PDF reading applications.
> Adobe Reader under Microsoft Windows is the only implementation I am
> aware of that at least somewhat works.
>
> So, if the recipient isn't a Windows user, or if they are, but they
> access the PDF file in another reading application, such as that
> included in the browser - then it will be as though the tagging didn't
> exist so far as the user's experience is concerned.
>
> On 17/1/23 17:21, Brandon Keith Biggs via BlindMath wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 1. PDFs are slow to open and often crash the viewer.
>> 2. PDFs can't show math.
>> 3. It's so difficult to make a correctly tagged PDF, it almost never
>> happens in the real world, even from governments who have section 508.
>> 4. There isn't really a good pdf viewer that allows you to accessibly take
>> notes.
>> 5. If you want to show interactive application demos in JavaScript, PDF
>> doesn't allow that.
>> 6. If you want to show videos, PDF doesn't allow that.
>> 7. If you want to manually edit the internal code, PDF is really not meant
>> for that.
>> 8. For low vision users, PDFs don't allow for complex sizing and color
>> manipulations.
>>
>> PDFs are at the bottom of my document preference list. Epub and HTML are
>> so
>> much better because they do everything above, as well as everything PDFs
>> can do.
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2023 at 11:25 AM Bhavya shah via BlindMath <
>> blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jonathan,
>>>
>>> Thanks for your detailed inputs! One question I have always had is
>>> about the accessibility of the PDF format. If made correctly, are
>>> accessible, well-tagged PDFs as good as accessible HTML? If not, what
>>> are the structural features inherent to PDF files that make them less
>>> preferable than alternatives like Word or HTML?
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> On 1/11/23, Jonathan Godfrey via BlindMath <blindmath at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>>> Hello Bhavya,
>>>>
>>>> The vast majority of research papers and other academic works are
>>> drafted in
>>>> either MS Word or a form of LaTeX. I'll save my evangelism on the merits
>>> of
>>>> markdown for another day.
>>>>
>>>> Reading MS Word articles and improving their accessibility is
>>>> well-documented elsewhere so I won't pretend to have any expertise
>>> worthy of
>>>> sharing. I haven't opened a new Word document since 2015 (perhaps
>>> earlier)
>>>> except to test a specific feature relating to access. I must consume
>>> content
>>>> written by people who like to suffer MS products often of course, and
>>> they
>>>> must get sick of me demanding the docx file instead of the pdf they
>>> chose to
>>>> make just so that I can read the content.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Most authors drafting their work in LaTeX generate a pdf and this is
>>> what I
>>>> will have to admit, irritates me to distraction. There is little
>>> stopping an
>>>> author from generating HTML in addition to the pdf except their own
>>>> ignorance. The proliferation of pdf over the last twenty-five years
>>> (before
>>>> that we used post-script files not pdf) exists because the tools to
>>> create
>>>> pdf are at the fingertips of the authors. The editor software they have
>>>> gives them a button to click; generating HTML is as simple for any
>>>> author
>>>> using 20th century techniques and today's software. In the really old
>>> days,
>>>> we used to process our documents using command line instructions. We
>>> would
>>>> quite literally type `latex mywork.tex` and wait for it to do its stuff.
>>>> That command became `pdflatex mywork.tex` but there has been another
>>> command
>>>> `htlatex mywork.tex` in the standard miktex distributions for well over
>>>> a
>>>> decade. This last command generates quite tolerable HTML but some
>>>> improvements can be made to split long works into multiple pages with
>>>> navigation links etc.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately though, generating HTML is not sufficient to provide
>>> access.
>>>> Adding alt text tags for example requires effort from the author, use of
>>> an
>>>> additional package to handle that effort and therefore is bound to drop
>>> down
>>>> the priority list.
>>>>
>>>> I find the notion of adding alt tags via post-hoc manual labour to be
>>>> abhorrent, but I do understand why this practice is necessary. In the
>>> end,
>>>> this practice makes access the problem of someone else, not the author.
>>>> There is a massive industry in adding the access into such documents,
>>>> and
>>>> the perpetrators of the inaccessibility are not the ones paying for the
>>>> problems they create (albeit unwittingly).
>>>>
>>>> An excellent resource worth sharing is the www.arxiv.org e-print archive
>>>> with its complementary www.ar5iv.org repository of the same works in
>>> HTML.
>>>> The team at arXiv have seriously taken notice of the needs of this
>>> community
>>>> in recent times and one day soon, authors will have to proof their HTML
>>>> versions in addition to the dreaded pdf.
>>>> Directing your interested academics to these efforts may well prove the
>>> most
>>>> expedient way of getting the necessary messages across. The team has
>>>> produced a report on its efforts that I found well worth a read, and not
>>>> just because I was quoted therein 😊.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hope this helps,
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: BlindMath <blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Bhavya shah
>>> via
>>>> BlindMath
>>>> Sent: Thursday, 12 January 2023 8:59 am
>>>> To: Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
>>>> <Blindmath at nfbnet.org>
>>>> Cc: Bhavya shah <bhavya.shah125 at gmail.com>
>>>> Subject: [BlindMath] Resources For Composing Accessible Research Papers
>>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> What resources can I share with researchers who may be interested in
>>>> improving the accessibility of their publications? I can point out
>>>> simple
>>>> things like alt text for graphs and figures, but I wonder if there are
>>> more
>>>> comprehensive yet highly practical guides (covering things like, say,
>>>> PDF
>>>> tagging) for researchers seeking to make their work accessible. This
>>>> question isn't strictly about Math research, but I ask it here since
>>> visual
>>>> representations of data are a decent component of what makes research
>>> papers
>>>> across disciplines inaccessible.
>>>>
>>>> I would greatly appreciate any thoughts or inputs!
>>>>
>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>> Bhavya
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Kind Regards,
>>>> Bhavya Shah
>>>> B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science | Stanford '24
>>>> LinkedIn:
>>>>
>>> https://apc01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fbhavyashah125%2F&data=05%7C01%7Ca.j.godfrey%40massey.ac.nz%7C9630bc36df224834512508daf40e7bac%7C388728e1bbd0437898dcf8682e644300%7C1%7C0%7C638090640306445069%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=%2BRaqVSasFTc8oyakOW5x5iHErA%2FFH7R2g8OwY1e3Pg0%3D&reserved=0
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>>>
>>> --
>>> Kind Regards,
>>> Bhavya Shah
>>> B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science | Stanford '24
>>> LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavyashah125/
>>>
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-- 
Kind Regards,
Bhavya Shah
B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science | Stanford '24
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavyashah125/